Looks bloody good. I think it will work for a good place to feed in random vocab as you come across it and want to SRS it.
Should be fixed now. This is now processed in the background (dealing with timezones was not accurate enough when it comes to daylight saving, depending on the server host). Let me know if this works for you now.
Perfect! Thank you!
Hey everyone.
Thank you to the 300+ who have tried Lapis, and especially to those who offered feedback and impressions in this thread and in other places!
We started this with a Patreon-based financial plan, but over the last few days we faced some problems with that (if you’re in an unlucky region you can face some blocking issues). Patreon is now out of the question. Later, we’ll be moving to a subscription based plan (details TBD), but for now the app will remain free for as long as we can in the beta phase.
That said, we were able to setup a donation option for those who expressed interest in wanting to support the project. You can find it in the landing page (lapisapp.com) if you scroll down. Your help will be reflected directly on how much time and effort we can spend on evolving the app to its original target goals and beyond. Thank you!
Congrats on 300+ users, that’s a big achievement! You guys should be proud!
I believe this is better for both you guys and the app in the long run! Looking forward to seeing what the future will bring 
I’m really enjoying the app, especially the grammar construction box! It seems a lot more accurate after the updates too 
I have some small notes (I didn’t take screenshots, sorry!):
- 今日は displays the definition for こんにちは, though I’m fairly sure きょうは would usually be more correct
- ケンカ doesn’t display the definition for 喧嘩, although I think it’s commonly written in katakana.
Thanks! Both fixed.
Fixed a bug for when an entry has a valid kana only (usually katakana) reading. So other similar issues to this are fixed too.
Just one piece of feedback, is a username really necessary?
When I saw this field, it stopped me in my tracks and made me deliberate potential usernames and what the use cases would be when really, the sign up form should be as simple to fill out as possible . Lapis doesn’t seem like a very social platform so surely having my email is sufficient?
Hey! A couple more notes:
- おれ seems to default to “to be” instead of “I”
- The segmentation feature doesn’t seem to recognize the imperative form of verbs: for ichidan verbs nothing comes up, and for godan verbs, it gives the construction for the -i form of the potential verb
Also, suggestion: would it be possible to include the “drill into this box” function on the SRS cards? Right now that option is only available in Workspace, but it would be helpful in Srs too if I wanted to save a box for it’s grammar.
It’ll become necessary when we introduce vocab sheets (you’ll be able to share them and allow read/write access, and maybe more. Great for book clubs). There are a couple more things we’re thinking about that might need usernames later, so we require them from now. We can’t use emails because then your email would be exposed.
“Name” on the other hand is completely useless, it was there because it’s included by default in our identity provider. We’ll remove it later.
In the backlog. One thing to note is that we’re not adding things in priority of commonness because we have a certain process of registering new grammar. That’s why there’s a couple simpler common forms not recognized yet, we’ll be getting to these soon.
A reason for that is we take a minimal snapshot of what you selected, whereas the data you see in the box is very rich so we didn’t include it in the snapshot. (It’s a snapshot and not a reference because the segmentation engine is changing all the time, so there is no valid identity in the sentence to track).
Remember that you can always click on “Segment this sentence” to view the whole sentence segmented again:
From there you get the full featured segmentation page again without leaving your review and you can drill into boxes. Would this be good enough for what you want?
Oh, I didn’t realize it did that! Thanks, that works
Hey everyone. A small update.
Things slowed down lately as we’ve been trying to resolve a problem related to payment services. We have a bit of a special situation where I live, so we haven’t been able to setup donations or subscriptions right now. Regardless, the app will remain operational for as long as we can manage. Hopefully we’ll be able to resolve this before then.
On the other hand. We’ve been adding more and more grammar. Focus is on registering the grammar pattern, some of these will be missing the explanation/tags until a bit later. Check the list here: Lapis - Language Learning Platform - Japanese
Adding grammar remains to be the 1st priority. After which we’ll start focusing on the following:
- A few segmentation systems need to be implemented to enhance accuracy and allow registering more complex grammar patterns
- Vocab sheets
- More SRS features
- Mobile app
Hmm… unfortunately this redirects to a login page without any information. (Not even signup seems possible, only login?)
Are there any pages that give a bit of an overview that don’t require registration? Or is this thread everything I need?
The post in this thread has a lot of info, but there’s a landing page here: https://lapisapp.com
(It’s a bit outdated though. Here’s the grammar list I’m talking about in this thread)
Call me Google Translate because I can’t make sense of that example sentence. (Really, it came up with ‘If you say “I couldn’t believe it” for what I thought for the other person, I would want to do nothing.’ and I doubt that’s an accurate reflection.)
But, anyway, I was wondering about the ‘-I stem’ labelling. Is that the ‘official’ term for it, given that ichidan verbs can also have -e stems?
And I noticed it didn’t know いかがです, but you’re probably aware of that.
That’s not a good example sentence at all (it’s a random one from the internet), sorry about that. I just chose it because it has some combination of things I wanted to show. I should change it into something easier later.
If we’re talking original Japanese definitions, no that’s not standard naming, but it gives me a good system to designate easy names to the different stems the engine can detect. So, we do have -E stems, there’s also -A.
Thanks. This is a weird case, will have a look.
Hello, fellow Software Engineer!
This tool is amazing!
It lacks a few grammar explanations, yet, but is very useful.
This combined with an OCR could be the best tool to learn while reading mangas. I have a hard time trying to read because even if I can understand the dictionary form of the words, I don’t know the construction of the full word and what it means. This app solves that problem in a great way.
The API seems pretty clean, too. I imagine we will be able to make extensions or use it in other apps.
Regarding the problem with payment services, I think there are some services that allows you to receive the payment in cryptocurrencies while the user pays with card. If the problem is related with how to receive the money in your country, that might help.
Let me know if I can help you in any way, I’d like to see this project grow 
Hello!!
This is one of the things that will take a lot of effort. Once I’m able to give it the time this will be on a high priority.
Yeah, that could be a real game changer for people who aren’t yet adept at kanji. There’s a lot of potential, this and many other ideas.
I design the apis with that in mind 
I did make extensive research regarding that and unfortunately these kinds of services are extremely limited. Lapis isn’t particular easy to host, so it was impossible to depend on those. We’re completely stuck for the time being… It’s hard to believe, but that’s what you get for living in an unfortunate region sometimes. Regardless, we’re hoping to resolve this soonish and open a subscription plan of some sort.
Thank you! Hopefully we’ll resolve the finance problem soon and we’ll be back to growing!
I’m finding that the site is often down. Is anyone else getting this?